Abraham Lincoln was named the greatest American president, while Donald Trump ranks last after a group of self-styled experts conducted a new presidential ranking.
For the third time in the Presidential Greatness Project expert survey in 2024, Lincoln topped the rankings, following his top spot in the 2015 and 2018 versions of the survey.
Per a release from the Presidential Greatness Project, the 154 respondents to the survey included “current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, which lauds itself as the foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics, as well as scholars who have recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses.”
On a scale of 0-100, the respondents were asked to rate the president, with 0 being a failure, 50 for average, and 100 for great. In the top five rankings were Franklin Delano Roosevelt at number two, George Washington at number three, Theodore Roosevelt at number four, and Thomas Jefferson at number five.
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Being ranked worse than James Buchanan at 44, Andrew Johnson at 43, Franklin Peirce at 42, and William Henry Harrison at 41, Trumph was placed last in the survey. Respondents were also followed by their political alliance and ideology, which the release claims did not “tend to make a major difference overall” in the rankings. However, there were some outliers, mainly with recent presidents.
Trump, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush were more likely to be ranked higher by conservatives or Republicans, with Reagan being ranked an average of 5th by Republican respondents, Bush 19th, and Trump 41st. Among Democratic respondents, Reagan was ranked an average of 18th, Bush 33rd, and Trump 45th.
A similar partisan divide was noticeable for Barack Obama and President Biden, who ranked an average of 6th and 13th, respectively, among Democratic respondents and 15th and 30th among Republicans. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was ranked higher by Republican respondents (10th) than he was by Democrats (12th).
Obama was ranked 7th, Clinton 12th, Biden 14th, Reagan 16th, and Bush 32nd in the overall survey ranking.
